Bimani Jones says it's kind of eerie watching NFL games this year.

The national anthem is sung remotely.

The crowd noise is canned, a baseline murmur piped in by the league itself.

The stadiums aren't even close to full.

Whoever the first person was to come up with the laugh track has been totally validated

in his decision, right?

Bumani reports on all this for ESPN.

Because these games feel empty in a lot of ways without people.

Like they're trying to pipe in the noise to kind of recreate the effect of it,

but fans are so much a part of the television production. And I think if nothing else,

everything that's happened in COVID is laid bare that what sports are, particularly to

like the money-making engine that we got are television shows. And a significant part of the television

show is not there without people being there.

Instead of people, football's television co-star this season is COVID, because the coronavirus is also in these stadiums, silent, invisible.

But right there on the field, all 32 teams have suspended players for testing positive for coronavirus, but not a

single game has been canceled. Not yet anyway. I think that there's a segment of people that measure

how well a league is doing in these times by whether or not games get played, right? There's like,

hey, man, we got all these games played.

We need football because football has a much more religious place in this society than any other sports do.

And so they're like, yo, the church is open.

Thank God.

So if you could describe the NFL in one word right now, like what word would you use?

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